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GOP Blocks Senate Debate On Dem Student Loan Bill
TheGift73 writes with this quote from an AP report:
"Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic bill Tuesday to preserve low interest rates for millions of college students' loans, as the two parties engaged in election-year choreography aimed at showing each is the better protector of families in today's rugged economy. The 52-45 vote to begin debating the legislation fell eight votes short of the 60 needed to proceed and stalled work on an effort both parties expect will ultimately produce a compromise, probably soon. For now, each side is happy to use the stalemate to snipe at the other with campaign-ready talking points while they are gridlocked over how to cover the $6 billion cost."
It is funny how many bills he tries to bluff through Congress. This and the millionaires tax are something the republicans are going to torpedo, but in the process, they make republicans look like they hate the small guy. Both parties are against the small guy, but public portrayal of Democrats helping the poor is the old school image that could help them in today's economy too.
God spoke to me
The Repubs look like the losers for putting it to the little guys. The Dems look like losers for continuing to support increased spending.
And of course we are the losers because were' stuck with both of them.
Why don't these students just ask their parents for money?
--M.R.
If either side really wanted to offer better protection for families, they'd kill student loans altogether. This would make education prohibitively expensive at going rates, and immediately pop the education cost bubble.
You can get better education, free or nearly free, in most of Europe, and yet the US youth just sits there, saddling itself with gazillions in student loan debt -- all of which it cannot default on, because it belongs to uncle Sam himself. Shudder...
Lets keep artificially inflating the cost of university education by subsidizing more gender studies majors!
Personally I am quite happy to halve the expense and just study one gender,
Republicans seem to vote against anything that Democrats propose. I'm 50 and I've never seen this in my entire life. Republicans either get every single thing they want or they hold their breath until they get their way. Without compromise there is no government only gridlock. If compromise is dead how are we different from every other banana republic out there? We used to rule from the middle but now we get our choice of extremes. Either the extreme right wing get their way or they threaten to bring the country to it's knees. They only amount to at the most a third of the citizens so since when do a third of the people call themselves a majority and demand we all obey them???? I don't like the Democrats but the right wing Republicans scare the hell out of me. The right wing and rich stole half the country during Bush 42's rule and now they are demanding the rest. If the rich get their way you better get used to a system that resembles feudal England. We'll all end up working for our rich masters. Don't believe me then in 50 years I dare you to tell me I'm wrong. In the last 10 years the rich got a LOT richer and the rest of us are struggling. The Republicans call it trickle down economics but I call it pissing down my neck and calling it rain!
Many moons ago, someone posted something like this here on Slashdot:
Dems - want a European type of capitalist/socialist type of economy with plenty of entitlement programs with the taxation to go with it.
Reps - want to turn the US into a Third World Shithole where you have 99% poor slobs with a 1% super wealthy fat cats with all the power.
It's pretty obvious who's winning contrary to what the Talk Radio and Fox News people say.
Does it have to be one or the other? I don't know. But if it does, I'll take the European model any day because I just don't have the connections to become a 1%'er.
And if one is naive enough to believe that all they need to do is work hard and they'll be a 1%'er; well, good luck with that.
This will not make any difference to those, who are getting the student loans, not at all.
In fact with the latest developments that the student loans are forgiven in 15 to 20 years and that the monthly payments cannot exceed 10% of so called 'discretionary spending', which starts at the yearly amount exceeding 2 minimum 'poverty levels' ($16,000 per person or abou 35K for a family of 4), it means that a person making 50K a year will have to pay maximum of 10% of (50K-32K) per year, or $150/month for 15 to 20 years. If the person makes 100K/year, this goes up to maximum of $567/month.
If the person gets a loan of 100K, just to pay the principal for a person earning 50K /year, it would take 666 month or 55 YEARS, and that's only principal, at that point the interest rates absolutely does not matter, because he'll stop paying after 15-20 years, so he'd pay less than half of just principle out in that time, the interest rate does not matter.
This is political nonsense, not reality, what is happening in gov't, the reality would include realisation that gov't shouldn't be in business providing any loans to anybody in the first place, so that with the decreased fake demand, the number of students would drop off and prices would go down dramatically.
Why is it a good thing for the number of students to drop off? Because how many students take these loans, adding to the national debt, while not working, adding to the national deficit, requiring this money to be printed or borrowed (and the real interest rates WILL go up eventually, and there is already over $1T of unpaid student debt out there). The huge numbers of students are only going to the colleges to get worthless sociology and literature degrees, or go into law, etc.
They shouldn't be paid to do that in the first place, who in their right mind would give a loan to a USA student going to major in sociology? WOULD YOU?
If you wouldn't personally, why would you want the entire system to do that?
Besides, rather than creating this false demand and forcing debt on the people, creating all this debt and worsening deficit, it would better for those very students to enter the workforce much sooner and without debt they'd be better off anyway.
Of-course the political elite on the left want to create this 'popular issue', which really only makes the situation for the students worse, and simultaneously this artificially decreases the work participation rate and thus artificially decreases the unemployment rate, so these student loans are handed out for political propaganda. OTOH the colleges and universities etc., are getting a sweet deal - huge numbers of gov't backed students, who don't actually CARE about the cost of education, as long as they get whatever loans is given to them, and those who can do basic math realise that it's in their best interest to go to the most expensive school.
In fact schools need to start including things in their curriculum that are as expensive as possible - how about trips all over the world as part of 'classes'? How about buying every student a house and an expensive car and all the furniture, electronics and clothing they want? Why not? If the system is on the hook for it and the students are capped at how much they will have to pay back anyway, it only makes sense, right?
Nobody sees this for what it is.
You can't handle the truth.
You'd be surprised how many people quickly turn from Dem to Rep once they're out of college and into the real world and have to pay taxes for all of the idealistic things they supported while in college.
Let's consider what college now means for many millennials:
1) Get a degree with minimal job applicability.
2) Go tens of thousands in dollars into debt to get it.
3) Get a job that requires no more skills than the degree imparted (and that pays ~$10/hour or less)
4) Find out that the federal government and private lenders put in all sorts of riders ranging from rising costs of holding the debt, to "we can arrest you if you are delinquent on your federal loan."
Anyone advocating making it easier to fall into the student loan trap is morally analogous to a drug dealer.
That's what you get for losing perspective on what is politically extreme and what isn't in the US.
A bunch of right wing extremists, who are spectacularly successful, because they've succeeded in making themselves look far more moderate and acceptable than they really are.
The U.S is deeply divided into two opposing camps, and the media encourage this by playing the two parties off like football teams.
Your party is not always right. The other party is not always wrong. Politics should not be a "my team's better than yours" shouting match.
So you say people become Republicans when money becomes more important to them than their ideals?
Well, if you can get a loan of any size that is capped either in absolute years of payment or only as a percentage of your earnings or both (as is the case here), then it makes absolute sense to get the biggest loan possible and to use it for all sorts of purposes that have nothing to do with education.
Why not buy yourself a house? You are already graduating with a mortgage anyway. Why not buy yourself a business? Then you can make the monthly payments without any problems at all.
Basically any sort of price control or wage control or interest rate control (which is price control on money) or any other artificial limitation only sets a level, above or below which weird things can then happen that were not anticipated (or were, but people didn't care).
Minimum wage, as an example, creates a bottom, below which people can't find work and below which it isn't possible to create jobs. At the same time it sets a bottom to the prices of goods and services that rely on the jobs at those levels.
With maximum interest rates, it absolutely makes sense to get loans that are huge and that can be used to make a spread, as the banks are doing right now - 'borrowing' from the Fed at 0% and 'lending' to the Treasury at 2-4%, so this makes a nice spread - easy money, but below the surface these banks are insolvent the moment real interest rates go above 2-4% and the Treasury is bankrupt as well, and the Fed obviously too (which can't in practice be bankrupt, but they can cause inflation and hyperinflation in worst case scenario).
Basically all wage and price controls create artificial consequences where there will be abuse, naturally, which is only to be expected, but somehow "nobody could see it coming", which is political nonsense of-course.
You can't handle the truth.
the loan forgiveness only applies to federal student loans.
- and this story only applies to the Senate and federally backed loans.
Second, the bank-supplied loans in particular are notorious for being cruel to those who took out the money.
- that's a nonsense statement, it has nothing to do with how banks operate. They operate within the limits created by the system, and the system allows them to give out loans with free money the banks get from the Fed and the system 'insures' these loans. There should be no surprise that banks use this to the maximum logical conclusion, it's not free market that operates here.
Interest rates are free to change at a moment's notice and some people have seen double-digit interest rate increases in single years.
- ah, but the US government and the Federal reserve cannot at this point allow the interest rates to go up, it will be politically difficult as the US economy would implode. So the artificial interest rates will be kept low in US dollars by the Fed printing all the money to buy all of the debt (and that is what is happening right now, the Fed is buying all new Treasury debt).
The REAL interest rates are already very high, that is exactly why nobody can actually get access to real investment capital through banks, the real interest rates that come out of real savings are extremely high, high double digits, maybe higher than triple digits, that's because there are no real savings and investments available with all this fake stuff going on.
Yes, I would. And I would wager that in reality, you would as well
- that's because you don't understand economics.
Providing loans to US students is exactly the same as providing loans to US housing market or buying US bonds or buying stocks in most US companies or buying State bonds or buying US municipal bonds, etc.
Why is that you ask? It's because all US debt now is the same, everything is on the US Treasury and Federal reserve, there is NO difference in buying US Treasury debt or US housing debt or US education debt, it all is the same stuff.
Who in their right mind wants to buy long term US debt? You think you can buy US bonds and save for your retirement decades from now? You think with the real negative rates of return and the Fed creating all this inflation you will be making money holding long term US debt?
See, dumb_register, that's why we are different - I can add.
You can't handle the truth.
The only way to bring tuition prices down is to reduce the amount of money that can be spent on education. It's not like the universities are not going to fill seats. They have class rooms and teachers that cost them money regardless of how many students they have...
That's a nice idea, but the UK (except Scotland) has recently conducted this experiment for real, and what actually happens when you cut government funding is that tuition fees rise, fewer young people go to university, youth unemployment rises, and the universities end up laying off qualified staff and replacing them with students:
UK university applications down as fees rise - "With fees rising to up to £9,000 per year, the impact has been biggest for England's universities - down by 9.9%. In Scotland, where Scottish students do not pay fees, there was a fall of 1.5%."
UK university applications in 'steepest fall for 30 years' - "The proportion of UK students applying to start degrees in the autumn will drop by 10% this year, a university leader has predicted – the steepest fall for 30 years."
Youth unemployment soars, and it's not just a phase - "But it's not just the shocking tally of more than a million unemployed 18 to 24-year-olds that should worry us... there has been a very sharp rise in the number of young people who have been claiming unemployment benefit for more than a year. There were just 6,000 in 2008, but that has increased by more than eight times to just short of 50,000."
The University of Cambridge has offered all academic and non-academic staff the chance to take voluntary redundancy (can you imagine - one of the world's top universities - offering *all* employees cash to volutarily leave employment?)
Thousands to lose jobs as universities prepare to cope with cuts : Post-graduates to replace professors
Of course not everyone's upbringing is net subsidized. Accounting for how much paid in versus paid out is a zero sum game. But here's an interesting little bit: taxes pay for civilization. Civilization advances the entire social group. In other words, taxes provide more long-term benefits than you can get from not paying taxes. Yes, someone will receive less than they pay in. Congratulations, you discovered the cost of living in a society, where burdens are shared, and some pay more than others.
Really? Is this concept so fucking hard to understand? What the hell did you do in social studies, civics class or even history
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Unregulated free markets absolutely require an oppressed underclass and an immobilized middle class in order to generate the desired outcome of maximum profitability for the people at the top. Any other configuration is suboptimal for those aims.
Nonsense. This is precisely what I called making shit up. If one looks at real markets that are as close to unregulated as they get, such as the stock markets, one doesn't see any of these features.
I did no such thing. Just because it does not fit your ideology does not mean it automatically qualifies as "making shit up".
Profit, which is what players in the market seek, comes when a commodity is sold below or above its cost. Profit is maximized only when people are exploited. If everything on the market sold strictly at cost then there would be no exploitation but also no profit.
And in order for there to be people to exploit (to maxmize profit) there needs to be distinct divisions of economic class. A free market that is optimized for profit is also optimized for exploitation of the under classes.
I don't know why you conflate markets with other social problems, but markets aren't responsible for class structures nor oppression of others. That's the domain of human beings who've been doing it longer than the idea of free markets have been around.
You are almost right on that matter. Of course, you likely either won't read this far in my reply or you will misinterpret what I just said. I already said that the market itself can't hurt people, but you conveniently overlooked it because you would rather focus on furthering your misinterpretation of my demonstration that your ayn rand / ron paul fantasy world would require oppression and exploitation.
,br> A market itself is just as agnostic towards the condition as a gun is agnostic towards a murder. Both can be used as instruments of destruction but neither is responsible on their own for the destruction. However much as a gun makes murder easier, a completely unregulated market accelerates exploitation of lower economic classes because that is what must exist to maximize profit.
If a completely unregulated free market truly presented equal opportunity for all, then profit would approach zero. As profit moves further from zero, so does exploitation, oppression, and destruction of opportunity.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.